The customer always wins in the end….

TimA — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 08:56:20 +0000

I like a pint. Mind you I mean a proper pint. None of your same tasting over advertised heavliy branded yet ersatz lagers. I mean a real ale -conditioned in the cask no less.It has just been announced that sales of cask conditioned ales sales have risen year on year for the first time for many a year. This growth has been fuelled by a growth in micro breweries ( there are now over 700 of them ) serving their local area and beyond, encouraged all the while by a die hard group of customers organised through CAMRA. Of course there are some national/ regional brands like Fullers London Pride, Courage Best , Timothy Taylor Landlord and Sharps Doombar. Only a couple of which have received a modicum of media support, both of which are on the take… ‘pride’ or ‘courage’!

The big 4 breweries, driven by the simplified demands of the highly geared national pub groups, with the notable exception of Witherspoons, have marketed to the hilt their lager ranges. Yet it is real ale that is growing even whilst many pubs are closing. Is this a triumph of PRODUCT over BRAND?

Yes is the answer but it is also, and more so, the triumph of the CUSTOMER.

For at the heart and the start of MARKETING is recognising what the customer wants and giving it to them.

So customer satisfaction should always drive the brand not distribution savings and reductive retailer demands.

Look more closely and you will find that the local breweries themselves are almost playing around with branding through strange and ever strange names ( dogbolter springs to mind) as well as quirky font bages. Fulfilling some of the needs of brands RECOGNITION and DIFFERENTIATION. Whilst not being able to afford other mainstream marketing activity other methods are being used remarkably well.

Take for instance my local brewer Rebellion in Marlow… they operate a club which allows members to bring 3 guests 4 times a year to drink free.

SAMPLING, RECOMMENDATION and WORD OF MOUTH to satisfy the most stringent marketer as well as they use the events to drive home quality by giving tours and presentations too.

So top quality marketing and a great night out for many increasingly LOYAL CUSTOMERS. I am sure that all the words in capital letters would have appeared in the planning for any of the national brands yet by combining great prodcuts with local marketing and the basic elements of branding it is the micro breweries that are winning.

But the big breweries could so easly raise their game with the power of the internet. For instance to drive sampling and sessions. Just ask Pizza Hut and Zizzis! Full restaurants thanks to ever changing on line vouchers.

We all need reminding that marketing starts and ends with the customer.

So let’s be happy to celebate a victory for customers all round. Oh your round? I’d like a pint!

Branding at the weekend It is a marketer’s lot that we are never really...

Branding at the weekend

admin — Mon, 26 May 2008 09:53:28 +0000

It is a marketer’s lot that we are never really off the job. Take a glorious weekend a couple of weeks ago… ‘Let’s go to the fair and there is a beer festival on at the pub in the village’ Perfect!!
Yet there were marketing lessons lurking there. Firstly at the fair. No ordinary fair, it was Carters Steam Fair. Every show and every caravan consistently decked out in a superb colour combination of ochre and orange with a strong identifiable logo everywhere with a powerful description. No brand manual, I’ll bet just a family business certain and proud of its identity.
A lesson to every one of us – pride is one of the most important factors in branding and implementation.

Over at the beer festival I started musing where had the phenomenon of the beer festival come from? I reasoned thus…with the headlong pursuit of lagers, cheaper to produce and easier to serve but with the key differentiation being in the expensively won image sustained by TV advertising the big brewers did not support their bitter brands. So into the gap came every Tom Dick and Harry with their micro brewery and silly names yet with a good and interesting product self-selected by the publican. By the way the gap may have been widened by the big brewers practice of guest beers.

Marketing Superior thought; In a big market leave a consumer gap and it will be filled.
So that was how I came to have a pint of Old Tom and thoroughly enjoyable it was too.
Now back to work!

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Marketing Superior » Bewery Marketing

The customer always wins in the end….

Branding at the weekend